Condemned Communities

Every year, Jakarta's security forces demolish the homes of thousands of people and destroy the residents' personal property. These evictions are carried out with little notice, due process, or compensation. Far too often, the process involves excessive use of force against those facing eviction. Many thousands more of Jakarta's poor live in fear that one day the bulldozers will arrive at their community. Forced evictions--the removal of people against their will from the homes and land they occupy, without access to legal and other protections--deprive individuals of some of their most fundamental human rights and needs: adequate housing and protection of their homes. Based on more than one hundred interviews, Condemned Communities documents the human rights consequences of evictions being carried out by the Jakarta regional government. In some cases the land is being claimed for infrastructure projects, while in other instances the government attempts to justify the forced evictions in the name of public order and removing trespassers. Yet many of the condemned communities have lived on the land for years or even generations. Many evictions can be seen as part of a wider government pattern to intimidate the urban poor and deter urban migration. This report illustrates that, far from improving the quality of life in Jakarta, the forced eviction of communities succeeds only in moving the problem to other parts of the city at great human cost.

Winner, W. E. B. DuBois Distinguished Book Award presented by the National Conference of Black Political Scientists Examines the lifelong consequences of a felony conviction through the compelling words of former prisoners Felony convictions restrict social interactions and hinder felons’ efforts to reintegrate into society. The educational and vocational training offered in many prisons are typically not recognized by accredited educational institutions as acceptable course work or by employers as valid work experience, making it difficult for recently-released prisoners to find jobs. Families often will not or cannot allow their formerly incarcerated relatives to live with them. In many states, those with felony convictions cannot receive financial aid for further education, vote in elections, receive welfare benefits, or live in public housing. In short, they are not treated as full citizens, and every year, hundreds of thousands of people released from prison are forced to live on the margins of society. Convicted and Condemned explores the issue of prisoner reentry from the felons’ perspective. It features the voices of formerly incarcerated felons as they attempt to reconnect with family, learn how to acclimate to society, try to secure housing, find a job, and complete a host of other important goals. By examining national housing, education and employment policies implemented at the state and local levels, Keesha Middlemass shows how the law challenges and undermines prisoner reentry and creates second-class citizens. Even if the criminal justice system never convicted another person of a felony, millions of women and men would still have to figure out how to reenter society, essentially on their own. A sobering account of the after-effects of mass incarceration, Convicted and Condemned is a powerful exploration of how individuals, and society as a whole, suffer when a felony conviction exacts a punishment that never ends.

Analyzes the history of enslaved African Americans' relationship with the criminal courts of the Old Dominion during a 160 year period.

A powerful account of how coerced migration built the British Empire In the early seventeenth century, Britain took ruthless steps to deal with its unwanted citizens, forcibly removing men, women, and children from their homelands and sending them to far-flung corners of the empire to be sold off to colonial masters. This oppressive regime grew into a brutal system of human bondage which would continue into the twentieth century. Drawing on firsthand accounts, letters, and official documents, Graham Seal uncovers the traumatic struggles of those shipped around the empire. He shows how the earliest large-scale kidnapping and transportation of children to the American colonies were quickly bolstered with shipments of the poor, criminal, and rebellious to different continents, including Australia. From Asia to Africa, this global trade in forced labor allowed Britain to build its colonies while turning a considerable profit. Incisive and moving, this account brings to light the true extent of a cruel strand in the history of the British Empire.

While state and federal prisons like Attica and Alcatraz occupy a central place in the national consciousness, most incarceration in the United States occurs within the walls of local jails. In This Is My Jail, Melanie D. Newport situates the late twentieth-century escalation of mass incarceration in a longer history of racialized, politically repressive jailing. Centering the political actions of people until now overlooked—jailed people, wardens, corrections officers, sheriffs, and the countless community members who battled over the functions and impact of jails—Newport shows how local, grassroots contestation shaped the rise of the carceral state. As ground zero for struggles over criminal justice reform, particularly in the latter half of the twentieth century, jails in Chicago and Cook County were models for jailers and advocates across the nation who aimed to redefine jails as institutions of benevolent transformation. From a slave sale on the jail steps to new jail buildings to electronic monitoring, from therapy to job training, these efforts further criminalized jailed people and diminished their capacity to organize for their civil rights. With prisoners as famous as Al Capone, Dick Gregory, and Harold Washington, and a place in culture ranging from Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle to B. B. King’s Live in Cook County Jail, This Is My Jail places jails at the heart of twentieth-century urban life and politics. As a sweeping history of urban incarceration, This Is My Jail shows that jails are critical sites of urban inequality that sustain the racist actions of the police and judges and exacerbate the harms wrought by housing discrimination, segregated schools, and inaccessible health care. Structured by liberal anti-Blackness and legacies of violence, today’s jails reflect longstanding local commitments to the unfreedom of poor people of color.

This book tells the story of Kelly Gissendaner, the only woman on Georgia’s death row until her execution in 2015, and highlights the role theological studies played in her faith and in advocacy efforts on her behalf. Central to the book is the written correspondence between Kelly and German theologian Jürgen Moltmann, known internationally as the “theologian of hope.” After reading Moltmann’s work in a course taught by McBride at the prison, Kelly began a five-year correspondence with him. When Kelly was denied clemency, a local and international advocacy movement arose that was rooted in her theological studies and friendship with him. The advocacy campaign challenged Christians who supported the death penalty to re-examine basic truths of Christian faith. As it was unfolding, the story of Kelly’s transformation changed people’s minds, not only about her case, but also about the death penalty itself. Weaving together powerful storytelling and theological expertise, McBride recounts that story again here, with an aim toward abolition, and offers practical ways that readers may enter the work.